My question isn't really about lower and upper bounds, but let's start there. Your post lead me to a question I hope you'll answer: So don't be fooled the Universe is well-known to be rich, full-of-metals, and highly evolved just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, or when it's only 5% of its current age!įor example, take a look at this "baby" galaxy. metallicity in the redshift range of 2.0 6. But is this a surprise that there are so many heavy metals in this galaxy? Let's quote from the article itself: For redshifts, higher numbers mean the Universe was younger and the object is farther away.) And this is the scientific paper that was written about it. This is TN J0924-2201, the most distant radio galaxy ever discovered. After all, when we take a look at our Sun, we see an incredible number of spectral absorption lines, surefire indications of heavy elements! Perhaps, in fact, that's the picture you have in your head when you think about our Sun. In some regions, where you had lots of high-mass stars in the past - particularly if you've had multiple generations of stars - you'd expect that you'd wind up with plenty of metals. But if you're all in favor of these heavy metals and elements throughout space - like me - you'd say that they enrich the Universe. If you're a hydrogen/helium "purist", you might say that they pollute the Universe. The star in question goes supernova, where enough energy is released to form all the elements in the Universe, and to form them in great abundance.Īnd, as you can see in the video above, these elements are released out into the Universe. Video credit: Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (Ors Hunor Detre, Oliver Krause). While our Sun takes somewhere in excess of ten billion years to burn through all of its fuel, these more massive stars take anywhere from tens of millions of years down to just tens of thousands of years before they exhaust the fuel in their core! And then, what happens next is simply spectacular. The ones that make it this far are anywhere from eight times the mass of our Sun up to hundreds of times as massive.
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